Proyectar desde la imagen: la fotografía como instrumento creador de atmósferas construidas en la obra de Druot, Lacaton y Vassal.

Lacaton & Vassal, in collaboration with Frédéric Druot were commissioned to upgrade 1960s and 1970s residential high rise developments in the banlieues of Paris. Based on the ?never demolishing, subtracting or replacing things, but always adding, transforming and utilising them? premise, the authors? used a three- step procedure in which photography played a major role. The process starts with some images taken by photographer Julius Shulman in the Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig. The pictures evoke a familiar collective imaginary for architects, in which models and furniture are carefully arranged to create an atmosphere for the extraordinary series of US post war houses. These pictures from another time and place are dreams turned into an argument to justify the decision not to demolish the residential buildings. In a second stage Californian atmospheres are overlapped with the reality on which they must act. In a series of assemblages Shulman ?s photographs interact with the reality of the vertical blocks, revealing the possibility of creating a new space, a gallery that extends the interior of the dwellings. Unattractive facades are replaced by glass from floor to ceiling, filling the rooms up with light and incorporating, as in the case of the house by Koenig, a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape. Photography appears again when the action has to be documented. The materialization of Tour Bois le Prêtre was exhibited in Frankfurt. The exhibition included photographs of the transformed interiors printed at full size and combined with domestic pieces of furniture, in order to create a three dimensional corner for visitors to experience by themselves the spatial qualities of the project. This project thus stands as a clear example that the relationship between photography and architecture provides the possibility of a new creative process. A way to design in which both disciplines continually get feedback from each other, obtaining results that were unforeseeable before this union